its not truely a 1ghz tho. i have seen a guy test that board and they were only about 800mhz. Plus SD is fairly graphics intensive which the little via board has a hard time handling when you have SD and a DVD running. The processor can only handle so much. I also had the same probs as you and i had the epia 1.2ghz version and it choked pretty bad on SD and DVDs at the same time. there may be other ways around this issue but i didnt want a system that ran at its max all the time. now, i can run at 60fps and watch dvds all day and not skip a beat. im just not overly skilled with software and hardware so i just went the overkill route, lol